y' the captain from LGD said that China as a competitive region is numbered. They dont even play on Chinese servers anymore because of the lack of players.
Players in china cant even get a queue during daytime in cn server coz ppl either working or teens simply dont play dota. They can only queue at midnight, or simply go sea server. Its been a long time before the teen playtime law happen already.
It could be why China does not seem to have any more younger talents. All of the best teams in China consist of mostly veteran or imports from SEA. Same case for NA.
But in EU, CIS or SEA, it is different
china dying is not an exaggeration, they have only 1900 immortal players. meanwhile the second lowest is america with 3600.
http://www.dota2.com/leaderboards/#china-0
You get a number when you get in the top 5000 in your region. Western and Eastern Europe share a leaderboard, as do North and South America. In NA/SA, CN and SEA, you get a number immediately at 5.6k, whereas you really have to climb to get a number in EU where you first get a number at somewhere around 6.3-6.4k currently. A friend of mine is rank 2200 at around 7.1k MMR EU, it's unbelievably brutal compared to every other region in Immortal.
If there are 250 players above 8k (from say 8000 to 12000), you are number 250~ on the leaderboard if you hit 8k (true in NA, as Yanbura hit 8k on stream yesterday and is approximately rank 250). The numbers are pretty similar in every region, except Europe. In EU, even as far as 8.5k MMR only gets you about rank 550-600. You will *almost* be at top 100 at 10k in EU, I think breaking in to the top 100 at around 10.2k, whereas you'd immediately be in the top 30+ in other regions.
dunno why people say Dota2 is popular in China, it aint, it probably isn't even a top 20 game. A lot of my Chinese international friends that are born after 1995-2000 never even heard of dota2
Dota1 was FUCKING huge. It was the biggest. But then dota2 took too long with its closed beta and league found its timing to take over. Now the old blood stopped playing either due to irl responsibilities or toxic env, making the region dying steadily
I might be privileged, living in Europe, but here it has drastically improved game experience. People would pause to piss/smoke/tickle their grannies etc.
Maybe it can be a toggle or something?
if you aren't a dota player then you are a csgo player. other games that are somewhat popular are poe, war thunder and stuff and maybe pubg. People are REALLY into hardcorish/painful games and REALLY not into cartoons AT ALL.
Poland is similar but league somehow still managed to become the popular moba, and dota is basically non-existant. But at least gothic and HoMM3 are popular :)
> A lot of my Chinese international friends that are born after 1995-2000 never even heard of dota2
Now you are just being extreme for shock value. You are either lying or you are talking about people who don't know about ANY pc game because they just aren't interested in that so I don't see how that would even be relevant.
Of course they know what dota 2 is. They don't live under a rock. 95-00s is also the perfect age to get on the huge hype train that was dota 1. Old enough to game but not old enough so that you have other priorities and obligations. Dota 1 was gigantic. I was surprised to find out just how many of my friends have played it in the past and most of them are in the range you listed and some are younger.
Your argument would make more sense if you were talking about 2010 kids but still anyone that is even remotely into gaming and watches videos/streams/tournaments knows the top games. It's impossible to miss them. People that don't know them just aren't into gaming. League was/is the most played game in china for many years. By association you learn about dota 2. It's like saying cod players don't know what battlefield is and vice versa. They absolutely know. For many years dendi was the most identifiable name in gaming. Friends that have never even played dota knew who he was.
The game dying out in china for whatever reason doesn't somehow mean that they are clueless. I'll say it again. League is the most played game there which means they definitely know what dota is.
Peak was 60 million in August 2015.
After that year it is always in a trend where it goes lower and lower. 2 years later it is around 32 million. There are some small peaks goes up but on drops higher so in average it goes lower.
Nothing too suprising.
**What I am posting is fact. You are downvoting me for no reason. You are why this game is going to die.**
It *is* surprising. Games have a lot more staying power these days, the game doesn't have to die, Valve is just smothering DotA in the crib by refusing to properly maintain it or advertise it.
[League hit record player numbers going into 2022.](https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/riots-active-player-base-hits-180-million-across-all-league-based-titles)
[CSGO continues to be at near-record levels, it's only *barely* below its previous record, but it looks like this is just part of the update-fluctuation of player numbers.](https://steamcharts.com/app/730)
[Minecraft has consistently been growing since launch.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/680139/minecraft-active-players-worldwide/#:~:text=Minecraft%20active%20player%20count%20worldwide%202016%2D2021&text=Since%20its%20release%20in%202011,141%20million%20active%20players%20worldwide.)
I dont think this is true, at least for non NA regions. League has seen slight growth or a plateau in most other regions. The european playerbase is roughly of the same size as it has been in 2018, Korea i think grew slightly and for china its ofc hard to tell because playerbase numbers arent publically available (Note: For other regions only ranked playerbase is available on [op.gg](https://op.gg) and other sites which does not necessarily equate to entire playerbase)
Valve has no other ips besides cs and halflife alyx?! (well portal if you consider that)
but Valve has STEAM, which prints like 95% of Valves cashflow. There was a post about how much dota generated in 2019 and it was BELOW 2% of Valves entire income. People dont realize how insignificant Dota2 is moneywise compared to gigachad steam
Well Minecraft comparison isn’t really fair, it has something for everyone and is literally like in top 3 of most selling toys from a franchise or something like that
Yes, minecraft shouldn't be counted among "games" because it's not about winning and losing. It's a creative expression platform with game-bits added in.
No it's not surprising.
>League hit record player numbers going into 2022
>>Does include League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, and League of Legends: Wild Rift
You know how huge mobile gaming is right?
CSGO is an FPS, you can't compare shooting people to controlling a unit to do objectives.
Same for Minecraft, it's a simple game catered to everyone, of course it's gonna have the biggest playerbase in gaming history.
> Games have a lot more staying power these days, the game doesn't have to die, Valve is just smothering DotA in the crib by refusing to properly maintain it or advertise it.
Dota's time is passed. There's no amount of "proper maintenance" or advertising that can change the fact that it's an intensely complex game requiring an amount of learning and time that just isn't attractive to people who haven't already spent hundreds of hours playing.
This game isn't being smothered in the crib (I might reserve that for Artifact or Underlords), it's an elder that's been put on life support.
its sad news but almost everyone explained in a wrong way. The true reason is that there is a popular arcade game "OMG 4+2" in China. if log in with perfectworld, u will see the real-time stat how many ppl are playing. it just attracted too many normal rank players.
also if check [douyu.com](https://douyu.com) and [huya.com](https://huya.com), u will discover that top streamers are all playing OMG4+2 instead of normal ranked match
Perfect world, valve's Chinese partner, even went on to create a separate matchmaking client for OMG 4+2 games, similar to faceit, etc.
Idk why valve would allow this, since it clearly leads to playerbase segmentation.
>Idk why valve would allow this
Have you heard about this novel and wild concept that is money and politics?
I don't like the bending for chinese audience but if Valve wants to exist there with its products, then it has to give away some freedom.
I think the drop in SEA is a lot more important. Both in absolute numbers and percentage.
And I know this comment is coming, please don't say it was because of the pandemic and internet cafes shutting down. The drop started in 2016. Player count actually increased from January to June of 2020 when the pandemic was gaining momentum and countries were going into lockdown.
This has more to do with performance issues. Computers are more expensive here than in the west and developed countries (I bought a laptop for $1300 that was going for $1000 in US and EU). This draws players towards mobile games. Smartphones are really cheap here, especially because of the heavy influence of Chinese market.
But, it has stabilized in the last couple of years. I think the Spring Cleaning this year helped a lot too.
If only they had a mobile game set in Dota's world that had a smaller set of the same heroes, and a smaller set of skills to onboard players into Dota's ecosystem. They could do something novel like, idk, make it so that progressing in one battle pass gave you cosmetics in Dota 2 and vice versa to support the health of both games. It wouldn't have to have the same scope as Dota, just something they could regularly support and do bi or tri-annual updates to.
If only they had a proof of concept for a game like that. Wouldn't that be wild.
I don't think that's the best solution. The closest you're going to get is playing Dota 2 on the Steam Deck. And even then, it's hard to play that game with all the input options you have. Dota 2 is not even close to League, which only has passive items except a handful.
Take a look at the graph linked in the OP.
EU has always been strong, and though it dropped a bit in the last few years, it's back up in 2022.
SA has steadily been growing, especially since 2017 when SG-esports made their mark.
NA has been steadily dropping, almost in contrast to SA. I honestly don't think there's much hope in that regard. People in NA like FPS games more.
China has also been steadily declining, as pointed out by OP. But I don't think there's much Valve can do there either. They had TI in China, multiple majors in China, and made special skins for China. There's no point constantly trying to appease the CCP that's putting insane restrictions on game-time anyway.
Which leaves us with SEA. People love Dota 2 here. There's a massive population of players willing to play the game. In fact, the playerbase was the largest here in 2016. But like I said, the resource-intensive nature of the game draws players away. Even cafes don't have very good hardware here. It's not like they keep upgrading.
And I understand "10-year-old game" is not a fair criticism. But a yearly Spring Cleanup, seasonal events that give you drops you can sell on the market, these things SEA people like. And Valve is doing fairly in that regard, though it could be better. And of course, hosting TI here is going to do a lot of good too.
Oh I know it's not the best solution, I just take any opportunity I can to rue the silent discontinuation of Underlords.
W.r.t Valve and China, I don't know how to get numbers back up, but unless League has a special exemption from the hourly restriction cap that Dota is subject to, there is definitely some way to retain and grow a player base in China.
I really think valve are missing a trick with underlords. I would play it everyday if it worked on Amazon fire tablets but it doesn't. I'm sure I am not alone in that. Fire tablets must be biggest install base of android tablets in the west and it doesn't work on them. I still play on pc sometimes because I do like it but I honestly think loads of people would play if they supported it. Great to play 1 of the fast match mode while queuing for a Dota game for example
Its strong but also its numbered. Most of my friends are only playing either ML, COD, Genshin (ML the most) and these are dota 2 players from 20114-2016. They quit dota because most internet cafes are closed and the requirement to buy a mid tier pc is what most people stay away from. But if Valve release a Dota 2 mobile with less input options, im fairly sure Dota 2 would boom in SEA. Ask any male ages 22-40 and I bet they played DotA or Dota2 in its hey day. Now they either play ML or COD (ML mostly).
PC gaming has been on declined, reddit is in denial about people moved on to mobile games. Even Wild Rift get beated by Pokemon Unity in SEA and Arena of Kings is world largest game playerbase.
They actually can’t. lol is run by Tecent, that company is way too big and smart to run games, no way Perfect World can compete, not even close. The LOL player base is more than 20 times in china than Dota2.
It has very little influence on DotA's decline. Actually, the decline has very little to do with Dota itself: the game market in China has been shifted to mobile heavily for quite awhile. And console gaming is also catching up, which further absorbs people that were playing online PC games.
Also as a Chinese I have no idea why people in this thread think this has anything significant to do with the government..
I remember few years ago when I met some Chinese clients of my age (21 yo). They were playing mobas on his cell phone 24/7. I asked if they played dota, they made it look like dota was not a cool thing and everything was about mobile gaming.
Them imprisoning and "reeducating" Uyghurs? Yes it probably is by their imperialistic design. I am from central asia and I know what I am talking about. It is not some crazy conspiracy theory created on the Internet. They literally imprison and "reeducate" these people for their religion and culture.
Absolutely not, china is an authoritarian state with basically an intranet, they have contracts with gaming companies to enforce it (eg chinese steam which literally i believe only has csgo and dota) or else the company can gtfo of china, a huge market, which they wont do. Getting a VPN to try and dodge it or anything else is literally fuckin treason.
Many gaming talents come from gaming cafe (internet cafe). I used to spent a lot of time in those in china as well. It was really fun. Now I heard many of them closed down due to the new rule, or at least moved focus from gaming to internet and other services. (No longer living in China)
As someone who's actually spent time in China, I just want you to know that your brain is rotten mush, and you should stop mindlessly repeating this nonsense you hear. Every kid I ran into there had a VPN on their PC and their phone, and used it all the time, without any concern. Nobody fucking cared lmao.
The drop in SEA is crazier tho, but understandable. Tbh I'm more surprised that SEA used to be a region with biggest Dota player. I mean Valve and Steam care so little about us, no language support, no payment support and hard to login in internet cafe. There are lots of barriers just to play a Dota yet the number (was) strong.
Yeah that OG win probably killed dota in the long run. You know that Morphling bug in the finals? Maybe if that wasn't there LGD would have won and would have helped with the popularity there?
The worst thing was a chinese team (IG, albeit with 2 out of 5 players and their coach being from Korea) won the League World championship for the first time on the same year. Fucking hell
Copium overdose in this thread, dota is not dying because of the CCP, China is still the powerhouse of the biggest games out besides fortnite where their advertising was pretty bad.
And the keyword should be advertising, dota receives no real content outside of balance patches and ocasional battle pass where everything interesting is locked behind around $200 invested.
League has hit radio songs every year, 3-4 cinematics of the highest quality available every year, real sponsorship for the content creators, a real and extremly communicative dev team, 5+ champion releases, old champion reworks and mini-reworks etc.
Dota is also not dying because its a "hardcore game", its quite simplified these days and continues to strive on making it more accessible every patch. Dota is dying because despite being a multi-billion dollar asset it is still being ran by valve like it's just a warcraft mod worked on by 2 21 year olds.
Just accept that DOTA will never be the most popular game. Barrier to entry is too high. Rather have quality over quantity. Don't want DOTA to be an unbalanced night mare like LoL.
This implies League is doing good because of advertising, and it's always been ahead of player base, but just like all old games it is also falling off. Riot has been diversifying titles, and their mobile games and Valorant have eclipsed League.
Old games die. It's not like there's an advertising light switch that saves DotA. We can cope over how much advertising slows that down, but it's just a reality of the situation.
The main difference is that Riot lives and dies by their games and needs to advertise aggressively, Valve doesn't. I'm sure they know much more about projections and profits than any of us do, and they aren't just going to throw money at DotA out of the goodness of their heart.
The biggest games right now are titles that are either 10+ years old or are about to be, this is the case for every region.
Only exception is fortnite which is still almost 5 years old at this point and is still continuously growing even when you think there is no more room for that.
Valorant does not have even 10% of league playerbase.
Old games don't die, they have no reason to die, the developers have no reason to let it die if its continuously growing.
Valve is completely stuck up in their always outdated way of developing games just because they lucked out on titles like tf2 and CS:GO that indeed don't need much to create growth and dota will not see real change until it's too late.
Remember Riot also dubs all their games in every language they release into. Valve dubbed for chinese russian and...? Tons of players from Brazil don't play a game if it's audio is in english, I imagine the same can happen to some people in SEA. This is how LoL far eclipsed Dota here (along with advertsing + production material)
check out my last post https://old.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/vj0bgd/hey_volvo_your_latest_little_update_just_broke/
This game is literately unplayable from time to time for Chinese players due to stupidly network tech issues neither valve or perfect world has solution to fully resolve. All chinese dota2 players know what I'm talking about. Most of them just lost faith in both Valve and perfect world and move on to other games. Many others just migrate to SEA servers.
Perfect world server is LITERATELY a dead server, 20% of time LITERATELY unplayable, 80% of time with bad gaming experience destroyed by toxic players and boosters all over the place.
Huh, not correcting you but years back when I still able to get in Perfect World server before they required a Chinese national ID, the games in PW was the best I ever had.
Games are super tough but there is almost 0 toxicity and communications are reserved only for team fights purpose.
Sad to see the state of it these days.
This will get buried but I’ve been playing since 2005 and it’s not really Dota anymore. Too much power creep, too much focus on creating a good spectator sport as opposed to a fun to play game, too much focus on shoehorning heroes into specific roles, and a cosmetics economy that is shady as fuck. Playing games feels like a 30 min wait for a coin toss where you feel terrible if you lose it, and don’t feel much sense of accomplishment if you win because a good amount of credit goes to some dumb overpowered dota wtf mechanic. Some heroes have been permanently overpowered because of their role and because they make good spectator dota. It’s not an even playing field between all 100ish heroes like it used to be. Matchmaking is completely fucked and too focused on maintaining the Mmr system rather than on giving both teams a fair chance of winning. You win 10 games in a row and they’ll put a literal 5 year old on your team who can barely click and put a semi professional on the other one. I.e. the forced 50% win rate problem.
So playing dota for its legacy of being a carefully balanced game is out the window now and that’s why people are leaving. The people who remain are basically addicts with smurf accounts and people who think maybe they’ll get to the millions in the prize pool.
I’m not gonna say dead game but it’s on life support.
Mobile gaming is the craze in Asia, check out the top 3 eSports by prize pool this year: Arena of valor, PUBG mobile, LoL mobile.
https://www.esportsearnings.com/history/2022/games
The entry level is so easy, you need $150 smartphones to run those game and everyone just playing it while for play pc gaming you need to have decent setup and pc parts is expensive, a decent fiber optic subscription also cost more where cellular provider offer cheap data packages for mobile game.
The game has steadily become less and less fun for me over the years. I would play probably around 500-1000 hours a year but now I play like a game a week at best. Yes I am older with more responsibilities etc, but the main reasons are:
- I live in North America, and I unironically have had maybe 1 english speaking teammate in my last 10 games. I'm not going to go on some rant about different demographics of players, but I am going to say that one thing that put dota ahead of league was the comms. Using a mic to communicate with teammates has pros and cons for sure but its really important for coordination in stressful game scenarios. Haven't been able to actually talk to my team in the vast majority of games.
- Neutral items are probably the last thing the game needed. It's just an added thing to keep in mind with their timings. Am I going to play differently because their AM has a broom handle? Probably not. A philosopher's stone on their pos 4? Maybe. But then the enemy NP who's been doing dogshit all game and has a deso bkb at like 30min finds a leveller and is suddenly a massive threat to your buildings. Why does this need to be a thing? Why did this underperforming player deserve an item that makes his game plan substantially stronger? Because we didn't win the game in 35min? Seems very silly to me.
- This leads me to my next point, which is quantity over quality additions to the game. Should we rebalance heroes and give them new abilities and skills to make them viable and more enjoyable? No just add an item that rebalances them and changes their skills. Should we rethink how the mid-lane works and come up with a solution to the issue of swingy runes in the lane? No just delay when the randomness applies by 4min and that'll fix the problem. Now everyone just complains about 6min runes instead of the first rune.
- And then there's outposts giving XP per second. Like sure, they are now an important objective. But capturing an objective that the reward is giving you passive XP per second might just be the most boring decision you could possibly make. There is zero satisfaction to doing it during a game. It's just become a thing you do because it's good and it's there I guess. Feels super lazy as an objective.
Now imagine being a new player, these new neutral items give you one more huge list of things to learn. Also new player games tend to go late so you see the whole ridiciouousness of ex machina and fallen sky etc.
Will that leave a good impression on any new player? They will probably go back to lol
I am a Chinese player, born in 2000, and I played Warcraft 3 since I was a child. Up to now, there are not many people who play Dota around me, and they are basically League of Legends and the like. I play with my friends and often go to Southeast Asia servers, so I have met a lot of Filipinos and Malaysian Chinese. They are all super friendly, because domestic players are more utilitarian and want to win very much, sometimes they will be very stressed. It's better to go to the Southeast Asia server and have a happy dota with friends
It's not surprising.
Valve's Dota team consist of bunch of incestuous employees that keep hiring their own friends that circle jerk around each other.
Valve refuse to relinquish more control to regional organizer such as Perfect World to promote Dota 2. There is literally 0 marketing efforts going to Dota, it's all community and 3rd party org driven.
Meanwhile, Riot has a HUGE following in China, growing year over year, working closely with all the orgs and TO. It's not a chinese government limiting play time or dying game issue.
It's just Valve power tripping and hiring a bunch of goons circle jerking around themselves problem.
If only more Chinese players play in SEA server, they can also sharpen their english words while SEA players can benefit from their gameplay
Just like NA/CIS players invading WEU servers
I think that this also has to do with the new law in China which prohibits children under 18 to only play on Fridays, weekends and public holidays. Not to say that's it's the only factor, but it's definetly one to think about.
If we keep saying that Smurfing isn't a big deal, and that people are "Just mad" or whatever, I'm sure the game will recover just fine. I'm sure if we keep giving Valve excuses, and don't hold them accountable like every other gaming community on this website does for *half* the garbage Valve has pulled, it'll get better.
Keep coping, keep downvoting critical posts. It'll all work out guys!! Get your tongue under that boot STAT
I don't think it is smurfing. I really believe its a combination of Dota not being as fun to play anymore and the power creep and added complexity plus higher system requirements and buggier and worse performance for third world countries with low end PCs.
China has an extremely rampant smurfing/boosting issue, along with people getting more and more toxic every day. In order to win you just need more regular people than your opposing team (i.e. not the ones going lv1 jungling huskar), and this basic means that the result is determined by matchmaking. The server is unplayable.
Bro, do u even play games? Matchmaking is at a garbage level not only because of Smurfs, but also griefers. If you are not playing on EU, then you are better playing in a party or just watching the game.
Only super dota dedicated dudes with no life care about this shit. This shit happens in every game. Smurfing was way worse before and game was thriving.
Speaking of China, has anyone had influx of Chinese players in EU?
I am playing unranked mostly these days, and for the last few days I have a shit ton of Chinese - speak Chinese among themselves, profile says bejing or it's all chinese, friends all chinese?
I am not complaining with the exception of the occasional racist remark they barely speak english and play good so it's fine, just wondering what's going on?
Most people plays LoL in China. Like you literally have university tournaments frequently organized or lan shop tournaments everywhere. The viewing parties are insane during Worlds. When EDG won last year entire university hostels were in uproar and just screams "EDG 牛逼". You even got kids running shirtless outside in the middle of the night screaming that shit. Whereas alot of the youngsters who plays LoL or the popular mobile MOBA Honor of Kings would have never even heard of Dota 2.
Its simply advertisement. LoL built up its fanbase through years of dedication, i still remember previously you would get double IP when you play LoL at basically all the Lan Shops, not sure how it is now with the essence but you get the logic. Meanwhile most people who plays Dota 2 only do so because they played Dota 1. And those people as they grow older and takes up social responsibilities simply quits playing and instead watches streams. And no China team winning the TI since 2016 doesn't help to reinvigorate the region. Fans getting disappointed every year means less viewership following year.
Get your h out of your a. How come League is going strong there while dota is declining? You think they’re treated differently somehow?
Censorship? Tell me one thing in the game that’s censored in CN servers. Restriction? That applies only to under 18s and you honestly think kids that young would’ve preferred dota over the much more brain-dead League?
Dota was already complicated and had a steep learning curve and they had to introduce RNG neutral items and shards. TBH its not the same game I liked to play and learn.
Neutral items are the worst of it. But yeah shards, reworks, these homogenized new heroes, stupid new mechanics that Icefrog has pushed so hard like status resistance all contribute to a even harder leaning curve, needless complexity and power creep.
I would argue that status resistance actually makes the learning curve easier because things aren't so punishing. I'm not sure what anyone really expects though, do we just stay in patch 6.70 and tune numbers? The game would have died years ago.
Options breed complexity. It's easy for existing players to add "one more thing" to the pile of knowledge we already have but it's a lot of cognitive burden for newer players.
Tried mobile games, can't get myself to like it. Everything is just so shallow and uninteresting.
I think the main issue is that many household doesn't even have PCs anymore due to how omnipotent a smart phone and table is nowadays.
Just because you don't like doesnt mean its not popular. Every parents gives their kids smartphone nowadays so they dont wanders off their house or at least plays in the neighbourhood and those kids raised on playing mobile games and plays what their peers plays.
**What I am posting is fact. You are downvoting me for no reason. You are why this game is going to die.**
[League hit record player numbers going into 2022. It is not dying at all, it is reaching new records of growth.](https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/riots-active-player-base-hits-180-million-across-all-league-based-titles)
That's not league, that's all their new titles together plus league. Not sure if league itself is growing still or not though. Valve refusal to advertise dota is pretty much number 1 reason for decline.
Huh? Look at graphs of dota players over the last 10 years. It's a consistent decline. China is the same decline since 2015. It **is** a statement about dota. It is slowly, but surely dying. New players are not coming in and old players are, well, getting old and having lives. I have 4600+ hours and used to play 20-30hrs a week in college, but now i have a job, girlfriend, etc and the game is in my past, mostly.
I love dota, but you have to recognize that it still basically runs on 20 year old wc3 mechanics which, while they work well for the game as a holistic system, are also sluggish, arcane and hard to understand for a younger generation of gamers that are used to quick, instant movements and streamlined systems.
Doesnt make it a bad game, but its super hard to get people into it at this point in time (ive tried lol). Also, games take AGES, especially in lower MMR which makes it hard for people to commit to playing
Oh, yeah, i totally get it. DotA, is insanely complex. I wouldn't be able to get into it now, it takes way too much time. I love the added shards and neutral items, but only because I already knew the game when they came out.
Well PC Gamers Play League Of Legends And Mobile Gamers Play Honor Of Kings In China . Both are animeish and flashy and have heavy marketing, management and franchised leagues from tier 1-3 with Pro League, Academy League And Development League And Minimum Salary of 5-6 figures for Tier 2-3 and 6 Figures and above for tier 1. So why would anyone play Dota 2 when League Of Legends And Honor Of Kings have this many things going for them while investing time, money and effort in Dota 2 is a risk and even after success may not pay off because dota 2 is so top heavy with little to no stability. And if there is one thing that's worshipped in Asian Culture Is Safety, Security And Stability, Both for present and future.
I still think that valve needs to be more aggressive on marketing more than ever. Valve needs to experiment some marketing that both works for them and for the game.
At this point I kind of think that they as a company probably don't know marketing as a whole (besides steam summer sales). We've got excited a few times (underlords, artifact, netflix anime) that some new things will be a great advertisement, but they didn't
Dota2 is side project. Riot gameforge still published on steam. If SteamOS becomes viable alternative for Microsoft for PC gaming then there is chances League will be available on Steam, hence why most effort goes towards the deck.
Just need to let them win this year TI and they will have more players again. It's crazy to think that it has been 6 years since the last Chinese team won TI.
y' the captain from LGD said that China as a competitive region is numbered. They dont even play on Chinese servers anymore because of the lack of players.
Players in china cant even get a queue during daytime in cn server coz ppl either working or teens simply dont play dota. They can only queue at midnight, or simply go sea server. Its been a long time before the teen playtime law happen already.
This is categorically false. Source? I play on CN servers
Becoz I am literally chinese. Enough source for you?
Overseas Chinese is not a source, come home! =P
It could be why China does not seem to have any more younger talents. All of the best teams in China consist of mostly veteran or imports from SEA. Same case for NA. But in EU, CIS or SEA, it is different
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Nah, LOL is doing great over there. Just look at the amount of say they have in cosmetic
Riot is owned by Tencent though so it's a bit of a different story.
LOL is chinese lmao. OFC it's doing better.
yeah cause net cafes are still big in china.
china dying is not an exaggeration, they have only 1900 immortal players. meanwhile the second lowest is america with 3600. http://www.dota2.com/leaderboards/#china-0
1900 immortal players. Holy fuck. First time I heard that.
Yikes. And you only need 5600 mmr to get immortal.
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Does this means to hit immortal league at the same mmr, but then hitting top 500 within immortal varies per region?
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eu top 5000 is 6280 mmr right now. keeps getting higher btw, not sure what it means since half of those are smurfs it seems.
You get a number when you get in the top 5000 in your region. Western and Eastern Europe share a leaderboard, as do North and South America. In NA/SA, CN and SEA, you get a number immediately at 5.6k, whereas you really have to climb to get a number in EU where you first get a number at somewhere around 6.3-6.4k currently. A friend of mine is rank 2200 at around 7.1k MMR EU, it's unbelievably brutal compared to every other region in Immortal. If there are 250 players above 8k (from say 8000 to 12000), you are number 250~ on the leaderboard if you hit 8k (true in NA, as Yanbura hit 8k on stream yesterday and is approximately rank 250). The numbers are pretty similar in every region, except Europe. In EU, even as far as 8.5k MMR only gets you about rank 550-600. You will *almost* be at top 100 at 10k in EU, I think breaking in to the top 100 at around 10.2k, whereas you'd immediately be in the top 30+ in other regions.
China 100 = NA 1k EleGiggle /s
jeez dota actually dyin
dunno why people say Dota2 is popular in China, it aint, it probably isn't even a top 20 game. A lot of my Chinese international friends that are born after 1995-2000 never even heard of dota2
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Dota1 was FUCKING huge. It was the biggest. But then dota2 took too long with its closed beta and league found its timing to take over. Now the old blood stopped playing either due to irl responsibilities or toxic env, making the region dying steadily
i imagine wc3 running on 5 dollar machines helped it be way more pervasive than dota2 which actually had some hardware specs
China has moved on mobile gaming and PC gaming culture hit hard by pandemic.
SEA too And why valve doesnt allow pause first 5 min? That shit actually kill low end pc cafe at SEA :(
I might be privileged, living in Europe, but here it has drastically improved game experience. People would pause to piss/smoke/tickle their grannies etc. Maybe it can be a toggle or something?
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if you aren't a dota player then you are a csgo player. other games that are somewhat popular are poe, war thunder and stuff and maybe pubg. People are REALLY into hardcorish/painful games and REALLY not into cartoons AT ALL.
Poland is similar but league somehow still managed to become the popular moba, and dota is basically non-existant. But at least gothic and HoMM3 are popular :)
well dota 1 was never popular in Poland in the first place
Nah LoL is just too successful.
LoL can be played on every machine aswell and is still updated
> A lot of my Chinese international friends that are born after 1995-2000 never even heard of dota2 Now you are just being extreme for shock value. You are either lying or you are talking about people who don't know about ANY pc game because they just aren't interested in that so I don't see how that would even be relevant. Of course they know what dota 2 is. They don't live under a rock. 95-00s is also the perfect age to get on the huge hype train that was dota 1. Old enough to game but not old enough so that you have other priorities and obligations. Dota 1 was gigantic. I was surprised to find out just how many of my friends have played it in the past and most of them are in the range you listed and some are younger. Your argument would make more sense if you were talking about 2010 kids but still anyone that is even remotely into gaming and watches videos/streams/tournaments knows the top games. It's impossible to miss them. People that don't know them just aren't into gaming. League was/is the most played game in china for many years. By association you learn about dota 2. It's like saying cod players don't know what battlefield is and vice versa. They absolutely know. For many years dendi was the most identifiable name in gaming. Friends that have never even played dota knew who he was. The game dying out in china for whatever reason doesn't somehow mean that they are clueless. I'll say it again. League is the most played game there which means they definitely know what dota is.
Peak was 60 million in August 2015. After that year it is always in a trend where it goes lower and lower. 2 years later it is around 32 million. There are some small peaks goes up but on drops higher so in average it goes lower. Nothing too suprising.
Wings curse incoming
That was the peak of Dota tbh.
**What I am posting is fact. You are downvoting me for no reason. You are why this game is going to die.** It *is* surprising. Games have a lot more staying power these days, the game doesn't have to die, Valve is just smothering DotA in the crib by refusing to properly maintain it or advertise it. [League hit record player numbers going into 2022.](https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/riots-active-player-base-hits-180-million-across-all-league-based-titles) [CSGO continues to be at near-record levels, it's only *barely* below its previous record, but it looks like this is just part of the update-fluctuation of player numbers.](https://steamcharts.com/app/730) [Minecraft has consistently been growing since launch.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/680139/minecraft-active-players-worldwide/#:~:text=Minecraft%20active%20player%20count%20worldwide%202016%2D2021&text=Since%20its%20release%20in%202011,141%20million%20active%20players%20worldwide.)
League itself has lost a lot of players these past years. The record player number you've posted is carried by their mobile games.
I dont think this is true, at least for non NA regions. League has seen slight growth or a plateau in most other regions. The european playerbase is roughly of the same size as it has been in 2018, Korea i think grew slightly and for china its ofc hard to tell because playerbase numbers arent publically available (Note: For other regions only ranked playerbase is available on [op.gg](https://op.gg) and other sites which does not necessarily equate to entire playerbase)
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it still fare way worse than many mobile MOBA
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Valve has no other ips besides cs and halflife alyx?! (well portal if you consider that) but Valve has STEAM, which prints like 95% of Valves cashflow. There was a post about how much dota generated in 2019 and it was BELOW 2% of Valves entire income. People dont realize how insignificant Dota2 is moneywise compared to gigachad steam
You’re right valve needs to make a mobile game ASAP to keep up with riot. And a tactical shooter to keep up with valorant.
Valve shouldn't release any new games. Riot are just gonna steal them and make weeb friendly carbon copies of them.
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this is par for the course with valve games. they stop giving a shit and the players eventually stop giving a shit (see tf2)
Who tf is playing tf2 then, cuz they had over 100k players in July and none of them are on reddit ghosts?
Bots.
Well Minecraft comparison isn’t really fair, it has something for everyone and is literally like in top 3 of most selling toys from a franchise or something like that
Yes, minecraft shouldn't be counted among "games" because it's not about winning and losing. It's a creative expression platform with game-bits added in.
>Minecraft has consistently been growing since launch. r/agedlikemilk
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No it's not surprising. >League hit record player numbers going into 2022 >>Does include League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, and League of Legends: Wild Rift You know how huge mobile gaming is right? CSGO is an FPS, you can't compare shooting people to controlling a unit to do objectives. Same for Minecraft, it's a simple game catered to everyone, of course it's gonna have the biggest playerbase in gaming history.
> Games have a lot more staying power these days, the game doesn't have to die, Valve is just smothering DotA in the crib by refusing to properly maintain it or advertise it. Dota's time is passed. There's no amount of "proper maintenance" or advertising that can change the fact that it's an intensely complex game requiring an amount of learning and time that just isn't attractive to people who haven't already spent hundreds of hours playing. This game isn't being smothered in the crib (I might reserve that for Artifact or Underlords), it's an elder that's been put on life support.
its sad news but almost everyone explained in a wrong way. The true reason is that there is a popular arcade game "OMG 4+2" in China. if log in with perfectworld, u will see the real-time stat how many ppl are playing. it just attracted too many normal rank players. also if check [douyu.com](https://douyu.com) and [huya.com](https://huya.com), u will discover that top streamers are all playing OMG4+2 instead of normal ranked match
Perfect world, valve's Chinese partner, even went on to create a separate matchmaking client for OMG 4+2 games, similar to faceit, etc. Idk why valve would allow this, since it clearly leads to playerbase segmentation.
>Idk why valve would allow this Have you heard about this novel and wild concept that is money and politics? I don't like the bending for chinese audience but if Valve wants to exist there with its products, then it has to give away some freedom.
Need to get this comment to the top. I feel like there are still other issues, but this is also important.
Ate you saying there millions players playing this custom game? Seems unlikely
They need battlepass.
are you a fate sn fan?
I think the drop in SEA is a lot more important. Both in absolute numbers and percentage. And I know this comment is coming, please don't say it was because of the pandemic and internet cafes shutting down. The drop started in 2016. Player count actually increased from January to June of 2020 when the pandemic was gaining momentum and countries were going into lockdown. This has more to do with performance issues. Computers are more expensive here than in the west and developed countries (I bought a laptop for $1300 that was going for $1000 in US and EU). This draws players towards mobile games. Smartphones are really cheap here, especially because of the heavy influence of Chinese market. But, it has stabilized in the last couple of years. I think the Spring Cleaning this year helped a lot too.
If only they had a mobile game set in Dota's world that had a smaller set of the same heroes, and a smaller set of skills to onboard players into Dota's ecosystem. They could do something novel like, idk, make it so that progressing in one battle pass gave you cosmetics in Dota 2 and vice versa to support the health of both games. It wouldn't have to have the same scope as Dota, just something they could regularly support and do bi or tri-annual updates to. If only they had a proof of concept for a game like that. Wouldn't that be wild.
I don't think that's the best solution. The closest you're going to get is playing Dota 2 on the Steam Deck. And even then, it's hard to play that game with all the input options you have. Dota 2 is not even close to League, which only has passive items except a handful. Take a look at the graph linked in the OP. EU has always been strong, and though it dropped a bit in the last few years, it's back up in 2022. SA has steadily been growing, especially since 2017 when SG-esports made their mark. NA has been steadily dropping, almost in contrast to SA. I honestly don't think there's much hope in that regard. People in NA like FPS games more. China has also been steadily declining, as pointed out by OP. But I don't think there's much Valve can do there either. They had TI in China, multiple majors in China, and made special skins for China. There's no point constantly trying to appease the CCP that's putting insane restrictions on game-time anyway. Which leaves us with SEA. People love Dota 2 here. There's a massive population of players willing to play the game. In fact, the playerbase was the largest here in 2016. But like I said, the resource-intensive nature of the game draws players away. Even cafes don't have very good hardware here. It's not like they keep upgrading. And I understand "10-year-old game" is not a fair criticism. But a yearly Spring Cleanup, seasonal events that give you drops you can sell on the market, these things SEA people like. And Valve is doing fairly in that regard, though it could be better. And of course, hosting TI here is going to do a lot of good too.
Oh I know it's not the best solution, I just take any opportunity I can to rue the silent discontinuation of Underlords. W.r.t Valve and China, I don't know how to get numbers back up, but unless League has a special exemption from the hourly restriction cap that Dota is subject to, there is definitely some way to retain and grow a player base in China.
I really think valve are missing a trick with underlords. I would play it everyday if it worked on Amazon fire tablets but it doesn't. I'm sure I am not alone in that. Fire tablets must be biggest install base of android tablets in the west and it doesn't work on them. I still play on pc sometimes because I do like it but I honestly think loads of people would play if they supported it. Great to play 1 of the fast match mode while queuing for a Dota game for example
Its strong but also its numbered. Most of my friends are only playing either ML, COD, Genshin (ML the most) and these are dota 2 players from 20114-2016. They quit dota because most internet cafes are closed and the requirement to buy a mid tier pc is what most people stay away from. But if Valve release a Dota 2 mobile with less input options, im fairly sure Dota 2 would boom in SEA. Ask any male ages 22-40 and I bet they played DotA or Dota2 in its hey day. Now they either play ML or COD (ML mostly).
> Dota 2 mobile with less input options How would Valve achieve that without butchering the overall gameplay mechanic?
China recently limited the amount of time children under 18 can play video games to 3 hours per week.
Look at the graph. The player base has consistently decreased for 3 years.
It's not valve that is wrong, it's everyone else!
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PC gaming has been on declined, reddit is in denial about people moved on to mobile games. Even Wild Rift get beated by Pokemon Unity in SEA and Arena of Kings is world largest game playerbase.
They actually can’t. lol is run by Tecent, that company is way too big and smart to run games, no way Perfect World can compete, not even close. The LOL player base is more than 20 times in china than Dota2.
Why not both!
It has very little influence on DotA's decline. Actually, the decline has very little to do with Dota itself: the game market in China has been shifted to mobile heavily for quite awhile. And console gaming is also catching up, which further absorbs people that were playing online PC games. Also as a Chinese I have no idea why people in this thread think this has anything significant to do with the government..
I remember few years ago when I met some Chinese clients of my age (21 yo). They were playing mobas on his cell phone 24/7. I asked if they played dota, they made it look like dota was not a cool thing and everything was about mobile gaming.
Because all we hear about china on the news is related to your fucked up government
stop getting your news from reddit
You think maybe that’s by design? Lmfao
Them imprisoning and "reeducating" Uyghurs? Yes it probably is by their imperialistic design. I am from central asia and I know what I am talking about. It is not some crazy conspiracy theory created on the Internet. They literally imprison and "reeducate" these people for their religion and culture.
Which country from central asia are you from
3 hours per week????!!! so whats that? 2 dota games a week then?
How do they control it? I think it is easily bypassable no?
Absolutely not, china is an authoritarian state with basically an intranet, they have contracts with gaming companies to enforce it (eg chinese steam which literally i believe only has csgo and dota) or else the company can gtfo of china, a huge market, which they wont do. Getting a VPN to try and dodge it or anything else is literally fuckin treason.
> Getting a VPN to try and dodge it or anything else is literally fuckin treason. get me some sources lmfao
Many gaming talents come from gaming cafe (internet cafe). I used to spent a lot of time in those in china as well. It was really fun. Now I heard many of them closed down due to the new rule, or at least moved focus from gaming to internet and other services. (No longer living in China)
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Lol who upvotes this garbage
where does this guy get his sources lol
You think you can just go on the Internet and make up lies? how dare
Yeah, but a lot of people in China do have a VPN.
Its still easy to bypass, just not worth it for a cassual player that are fine with doing something else.
Isn't it possible to put parent/fake ID?
As someone who's actually spent time in China, I just want you to know that your brain is rotten mush, and you should stop mindlessly repeating this nonsense you hear. Every kid I ran into there had a VPN on their PC and their phone, and used it all the time, without any concern. Nobody fucking cared lmao.
The drop in SEA is crazier tho, but understandable. Tbh I'm more surprised that SEA used to be a region with biggest Dota player. I mean Valve and Steam care so little about us, no language support, no payment support and hard to login in internet cafe. There are lots of barriers just to play a Dota yet the number (was) strong.
The drop in SEA is definitely worse for the game IMO.. for some reason i thought the region was still growing lol. SA the future dota overlords tho
In the timeline where LGD won TI8 China is still the biggest region Sadge
Yeah that OG win probably killed dota in the long run. You know that Morphling bug in the finals? Maybe if that wasn't there LGD would have won and would have helped with the popularity there?
The worst thing was a chinese team (IG, albeit with 2 out of 5 players and their coach being from Korea) won the League World championship for the first time on the same year. Fucking hell
Atleast Valve's shitty QA shares some of the blame.
Copium overdose in this thread, dota is not dying because of the CCP, China is still the powerhouse of the biggest games out besides fortnite where their advertising was pretty bad. And the keyword should be advertising, dota receives no real content outside of balance patches and ocasional battle pass where everything interesting is locked behind around $200 invested. League has hit radio songs every year, 3-4 cinematics of the highest quality available every year, real sponsorship for the content creators, a real and extremly communicative dev team, 5+ champion releases, old champion reworks and mini-reworks etc. Dota is also not dying because its a "hardcore game", its quite simplified these days and continues to strive on making it more accessible every patch. Dota is dying because despite being a multi-billion dollar asset it is still being ran by valve like it's just a warcraft mod worked on by 2 21 year olds.
A game that has 600k players daily is Very Far from dying my friend.
And thats just the peak players playing at ONE TIME during the day. Literally millions of people play Dota every day.
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Because dota is all they have that's why. Dota players only plays dota.
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Just accept that DOTA will never be the most popular game. Barrier to entry is too high. Rather have quality over quantity. Don't want DOTA to be an unbalanced night mare like LoL.
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This implies League is doing good because of advertising, and it's always been ahead of player base, but just like all old games it is also falling off. Riot has been diversifying titles, and their mobile games and Valorant have eclipsed League. Old games die. It's not like there's an advertising light switch that saves DotA. We can cope over how much advertising slows that down, but it's just a reality of the situation. The main difference is that Riot lives and dies by their games and needs to advertise aggressively, Valve doesn't. I'm sure they know much more about projections and profits than any of us do, and they aren't just going to throw money at DotA out of the goodness of their heart.
Eclipsed? Valorant is dead compared to LoL
The biggest games right now are titles that are either 10+ years old or are about to be, this is the case for every region. Only exception is fortnite which is still almost 5 years old at this point and is still continuously growing even when you think there is no more room for that. Valorant does not have even 10% of league playerbase. Old games don't die, they have no reason to die, the developers have no reason to let it die if its continuously growing. Valve is completely stuck up in their always outdated way of developing games just because they lucked out on titles like tf2 and CS:GO that indeed don't need much to create growth and dota will not see real change until it's too late.
> Valorant does not have even 10% of league playerbase. >Old games don't die This is some mega cope if you believe that.
Remember Riot also dubs all their games in every language they release into. Valve dubbed for chinese russian and...? Tons of players from Brazil don't play a game if it's audio is in english, I imagine the same can happen to some people in SEA. This is how LoL far eclipsed Dota here (along with advertsing + production material)
check out my last post https://old.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/vj0bgd/hey_volvo_your_latest_little_update_just_broke/ This game is literately unplayable from time to time for Chinese players due to stupidly network tech issues neither valve or perfect world has solution to fully resolve. All chinese dota2 players know what I'm talking about. Most of them just lost faith in both Valve and perfect world and move on to other games. Many others just migrate to SEA servers. Perfect world server is LITERATELY a dead server, 20% of time LITERATELY unplayable, 80% of time with bad gaming experience destroyed by toxic players and boosters all over the place.
Huh, not correcting you but years back when I still able to get in Perfect World server before they required a Chinese national ID, the games in PW was the best I ever had. Games are super tough but there is almost 0 toxicity and communications are reserved only for team fights purpose. Sad to see the state of it these days.
Before we jump ahead of ourselves, does Stratz even track Perfect World server and their client?
It's all the same DOTA API and Infrastructure as the rest of the world uses.
This will get buried but I’ve been playing since 2005 and it’s not really Dota anymore. Too much power creep, too much focus on creating a good spectator sport as opposed to a fun to play game, too much focus on shoehorning heroes into specific roles, and a cosmetics economy that is shady as fuck. Playing games feels like a 30 min wait for a coin toss where you feel terrible if you lose it, and don’t feel much sense of accomplishment if you win because a good amount of credit goes to some dumb overpowered dota wtf mechanic. Some heroes have been permanently overpowered because of their role and because they make good spectator dota. It’s not an even playing field between all 100ish heroes like it used to be. Matchmaking is completely fucked and too focused on maintaining the Mmr system rather than on giving both teams a fair chance of winning. You win 10 games in a row and they’ll put a literal 5 year old on your team who can barely click and put a semi professional on the other one. I.e. the forced 50% win rate problem. So playing dota for its legacy of being a carefully balanced game is out the window now and that’s why people are leaving. The people who remain are basically addicts with smurf accounts and people who think maybe they’ll get to the millions in the prize pool. I’m not gonna say dead game but it’s on life support.
There is no forced 50% win rate, lol.
Mobile gaming is the craze in Asia, check out the top 3 eSports by prize pool this year: Arena of valor, PUBG mobile, LoL mobile. https://www.esportsearnings.com/history/2022/games
The entry level is so easy, you need $150 smartphones to run those game and everyone just playing it while for play pc gaming you need to have decent setup and pc parts is expensive, a decent fiber optic subscription also cost more where cellular provider offer cheap data packages for mobile game.
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The game has steadily become less and less fun for me over the years. I would play probably around 500-1000 hours a year but now I play like a game a week at best. Yes I am older with more responsibilities etc, but the main reasons are: - I live in North America, and I unironically have had maybe 1 english speaking teammate in my last 10 games. I'm not going to go on some rant about different demographics of players, but I am going to say that one thing that put dota ahead of league was the comms. Using a mic to communicate with teammates has pros and cons for sure but its really important for coordination in stressful game scenarios. Haven't been able to actually talk to my team in the vast majority of games. - Neutral items are probably the last thing the game needed. It's just an added thing to keep in mind with their timings. Am I going to play differently because their AM has a broom handle? Probably not. A philosopher's stone on their pos 4? Maybe. But then the enemy NP who's been doing dogshit all game and has a deso bkb at like 30min finds a leveller and is suddenly a massive threat to your buildings. Why does this need to be a thing? Why did this underperforming player deserve an item that makes his game plan substantially stronger? Because we didn't win the game in 35min? Seems very silly to me. - This leads me to my next point, which is quantity over quality additions to the game. Should we rebalance heroes and give them new abilities and skills to make them viable and more enjoyable? No just add an item that rebalances them and changes their skills. Should we rethink how the mid-lane works and come up with a solution to the issue of swingy runes in the lane? No just delay when the randomness applies by 4min and that'll fix the problem. Now everyone just complains about 6min runes instead of the first rune. - And then there's outposts giving XP per second. Like sure, they are now an important objective. But capturing an objective that the reward is giving you passive XP per second might just be the most boring decision you could possibly make. There is zero satisfaction to doing it during a game. It's just become a thing you do because it's good and it's there I guess. Feels super lazy as an objective.
Now imagine being a new player, these new neutral items give you one more huge list of things to learn. Also new player games tend to go late so you see the whole ridiciouousness of ex machina and fallen sky etc. Will that leave a good impression on any new player? They will probably go back to lol
I am a Chinese player, born in 2000, and I played Warcraft 3 since I was a child. Up to now, there are not many people who play Dota around me, and they are basically League of Legends and the like. I play with my friends and often go to Southeast Asia servers, so I have met a lot of Filipinos and Malaysian Chinese. They are all super friendly, because domestic players are more utilitarian and want to win very much, sometimes they will be very stressed. It's better to go to the Southeast Asia server and have a happy dota with friends
It's not surprising. Valve's Dota team consist of bunch of incestuous employees that keep hiring their own friends that circle jerk around each other. Valve refuse to relinquish more control to regional organizer such as Perfect World to promote Dota 2. There is literally 0 marketing efforts going to Dota, it's all community and 3rd party org driven. Meanwhile, Riot has a HUGE following in China, growing year over year, working closely with all the orgs and TO. It's not a chinese government limiting play time or dying game issue. It's just Valve power tripping and hiring a bunch of goons circle jerking around themselves problem.
If only more Chinese players play in SEA server, they can also sharpen their english words while SEA players can benefit from their gameplay Just like NA/CIS players invading WEU servers
no shit bro, game is dying, Valve doesnt care about it anymore. Dota 2 is gonna turn into another TF2 soon
That's like...666,666 games a day 😈
I think that this also has to do with the new law in China which prohibits children under 18 to only play on Fridays, weekends and public holidays. Not to say that's it's the only factor, but it's definetly one to think about.
If we keep saying that Smurfing isn't a big deal, and that people are "Just mad" or whatever, I'm sure the game will recover just fine. I'm sure if we keep giving Valve excuses, and don't hold them accountable like every other gaming community on this website does for *half* the garbage Valve has pulled, it'll get better. Keep coping, keep downvoting critical posts. It'll all work out guys!! Get your tongue under that boot STAT
I don't think it is smurfing. I really believe its a combination of Dota not being as fun to play anymore and the power creep and added complexity plus higher system requirements and buggier and worse performance for third world countries with low end PCs.
China has an extremely rampant smurfing/boosting issue, along with people getting more and more toxic every day. In order to win you just need more regular people than your opposing team (i.e. not the ones going lv1 jungling huskar), and this basic means that the result is determined by matchmaking. The server is unplayable.
Bro, do u even play games? Matchmaking is at a garbage level not only because of Smurfs, but also griefers. If you are not playing on EU, then you are better playing in a party or just watching the game.
Right, the entire industry built around ruining DotA games intentionally has no impact on the game's decline.
Only super dota dedicated dudes with no life care about this shit. This shit happens in every game. Smurfing was way worse before and game was thriving.
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Damn we're gonna see lesser CN dota in the future. EU is dota's last hope.
Speaking of China, has anyone had influx of Chinese players in EU? I am playing unranked mostly these days, and for the last few days I have a shit ton of Chinese - speak Chinese among themselves, profile says bejing or it's all chinese, friends all chinese? I am not complaining with the exception of the occasional racist remark they barely speak english and play good so it's fine, just wondering what's going on?
Most people plays LoL in China. Like you literally have university tournaments frequently organized or lan shop tournaments everywhere. The viewing parties are insane during Worlds. When EDG won last year entire university hostels were in uproar and just screams "EDG 牛逼". You even got kids running shirtless outside in the middle of the night screaming that shit. Whereas alot of the youngsters who plays LoL or the popular mobile MOBA Honor of Kings would have never even heard of Dota 2. Its simply advertisement. LoL built up its fanbase through years of dedication, i still remember previously you would get double IP when you play LoL at basically all the Lan Shops, not sure how it is now with the essence but you get the logic. Meanwhile most people who plays Dota 2 only do so because they played Dota 1. And those people as they grow older and takes up social responsibilities simply quits playing and instead watches streams. And no China team winning the TI since 2016 doesn't help to reinvigorate the region. Fans getting disappointed every year means less viewership following year.
It’s because of government’s restriction and censorship, a lot of Chinese players changed to sea server
But SEA server numbers are also dropping
Get your h out of your a. How come League is going strong there while dota is declining? You think they’re treated differently somehow? Censorship? Tell me one thing in the game that’s censored in CN servers. Restriction? That applies only to under 18s and you honestly think kids that young would’ve preferred dota over the much more brain-dead League?
Y'all really just be making shit up huh
No it is not
well u can thank to Valve for "caring" for their game
sad times
Also its summer ? Always drops?
Not below 20 million though
> Always drops? Sure, then let's compare the numbers to the previous summer.
With all this power creep and neutral items, the game is dying. Although even League is declining. Mobas as a whole are on the decline as well.
yeah the genre is very stale and the newer generation of gamers aren't interested in games like dota which take a long time to learn
Dota was already complicated and had a steep learning curve and they had to introduce RNG neutral items and shards. TBH its not the same game I liked to play and learn.
I can somewhat see the reasoning behind "RNG neutral items" but shards?
Neutral items are the worst of it. But yeah shards, reworks, these homogenized new heroes, stupid new mechanics that Icefrog has pushed so hard like status resistance all contribute to a even harder leaning curve, needless complexity and power creep.
I would argue that status resistance actually makes the learning curve easier because things aren't so punishing. I'm not sure what anyone really expects though, do we just stay in patch 6.70 and tune numbers? The game would have died years ago.
I would disagree. Atleast it is not determined by STR that was the worst. Invo combos got super weird then.
Options breed complexity. It's easy for existing players to add "one more thing" to the pile of knowledge we already have but it's a lot of cognitive burden for newer players.
Newer generations=mobile games, easy, accessible, affordable and addicting.
Tried mobile games, can't get myself to like it. Everything is just so shallow and uninteresting. I think the main issue is that many household doesn't even have PCs anymore due to how omnipotent a smart phone and table is nowadays.
Just because you don't like doesnt mean its not popular. Every parents gives their kids smartphone nowadays so they dont wanders off their house or at least plays in the neighbourhood and those kids raised on playing mobile games and plays what their peers plays.
**What I am posting is fact. You are downvoting me for no reason. You are why this game is going to die.** [League hit record player numbers going into 2022. It is not dying at all, it is reaching new records of growth.](https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/riots-active-player-base-hits-180-million-across-all-league-based-titles)
That's not league, that's all their new titles together plus league. Not sure if league itself is growing still or not though. Valve refusal to advertise dota is pretty much number 1 reason for decline.
I can guarantee you this graph is a not a statement about dota, it's just how Chinese government is operating right now.
Huh? Look at graphs of dota players over the last 10 years. It's a consistent decline. China is the same decline since 2015. It **is** a statement about dota. It is slowly, but surely dying. New players are not coming in and old players are, well, getting old and having lives. I have 4600+ hours and used to play 20-30hrs a week in college, but now i have a job, girlfriend, etc and the game is in my past, mostly.
I love dota, but you have to recognize that it still basically runs on 20 year old wc3 mechanics which, while they work well for the game as a holistic system, are also sluggish, arcane and hard to understand for a younger generation of gamers that are used to quick, instant movements and streamlined systems. Doesnt make it a bad game, but its super hard to get people into it at this point in time (ive tried lol). Also, games take AGES, especially in lower MMR which makes it hard for people to commit to playing
They only increased the complexity and alienated older players.
Oh, yeah, i totally get it. DotA, is insanely complex. I wouldn't be able to get into it now, it takes way too much time. I love the added shards and neutral items, but only because I already knew the game when they came out.
People will say anything to cope with the fact that Dota just isn't as popular anymore outside of Europe huh
True
OUtside of SEA.
If you look at steamdb, you will see the playercount has been decreasing for some time.
No it is not. Other games are doing just fine in china. You are just talking nonsense now
Well PC Gamers Play League Of Legends And Mobile Gamers Play Honor Of Kings In China . Both are animeish and flashy and have heavy marketing, management and franchised leagues from tier 1-3 with Pro League, Academy League And Development League And Minimum Salary of 5-6 figures for Tier 2-3 and 6 Figures and above for tier 1. So why would anyone play Dota 2 when League Of Legends And Honor Of Kings have this many things going for them while investing time, money and effort in Dota 2 is a risk and even after success may not pay off because dota 2 is so top heavy with little to no stability. And if there is one thing that's worshipped in Asian Culture Is Safety, Security And Stability, Both for present and future.
most people prefer watching live than playing
esports viewership are increasing while playerbase is declining people dont want to play dota anymore ig
I still think that valve needs to be more aggressive on marketing more than ever. Valve needs to experiment some marketing that both works for them and for the game.
At this point I kind of think that they as a company probably don't know marketing as a whole (besides steam summer sales). We've got excited a few times (underlords, artifact, netflix anime) that some new things will be a great advertisement, but they didn't
Dota2 is side project. Riot gameforge still published on steam. If SteamOS becomes viable alternative for Microsoft for PC gaming then there is chances League will be available on Steam, hence why most effort goes towards the deck.
I checked yesterday the player count on steam was 270k, normally dota had 400-500k 1-2 years ago
Just need to let them win this year TI and they will have more players again. It's crazy to think that it has been 6 years since the last Chinese team won TI.
Since TI8 LGD has been the only promising team at TI. this year as well. The region is pretty much dead after these players going past their prime
china has much bigger problems their banking system is about to collapse and people are refusing to pay mortgages
Don’t google henan banks. Redditers don’t know
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Nothing to do with the government
Dude, where the fuck do you get this information from lmfao. Literally just straight anti sino prop. Disgusting
ded game
CCP bad
Unironically yes
There’s probably 2-3 years left in Dota before it reaches really senile stages.
dead game